Lost Inside
by Zilo
Summary: Movie: Highway. AU. Pilot's in trouble. Cassie and Jack to the rescue.
1. Leaving

Jack met Cassie at the door, home from work, wide-eyed and frightened. "We gotta go." He said simply. No explanation. All their stuff packed into three trash bags sitting in the middle of the living room.

"Go?" Cassie asked dumbly. It had been a long night at the bar serving all the drunk assholes of the world but she wasn't _that_ out of it. Jack wasn't making any sense. She looked at the ugly black trash bags again and felt fleeting sadness that between the two of them that was all they owned. "Go where? What're you talking about, babe?"

"Pilot. He's in trouble." Jack chewed on his lip and continued to stare through her. His eyes so far away she wondered what he was remembering.

Pilot. His best friend in all the world. He had left them over three months ago, took off in the Monty to go back to his girlfriend in Las Vegas. They hadn't heard from him since and although it had worried Jack a bit he hadn't been _drop everything _worried. 'Pilot can take care of himself. Do you think he's mad at me? Do you think he's mad I wanted to stay?' The words _here with you_ didn't make it to his lips but they didn't need too. Jack loved her and she knew that but he loved Pilot too.

"We gotta go find him." Jack took her by the arm and she immediately pulled him in close, her voice slow and calming as her nose nuzzled his neck.

"What happened, Jack? Did he call you?" She was almost dead on her feet but Jack was half out of his head and needed to be comforted. If they were gonna be skipping town soon too, she wanted a little more information.

"Yeah, from a payphone. He's stuck in this fucked up nowhere town called Regan. The Monty broke down and someone jacked all his shit. He was cryin and sayin a lot of shit that didn't make any sense. He was probably tripping cause half the stuff he said sounded just… fucked."

Cassie nodded apologetically. "Okay babe. Well, find him. Pilots' smart he'll be okay til we get there." She didn't exactly believe that but it felt better to say so and that's what Jack needed to hear anyway. She traced her thumbs down his cheeks and kissed him and then smiled reassuringly.

---

Jack drove through the darkness his mind moving sporadically from one thing to the next. Johnny The Fox had lent the two of them a car and wished he could join them but had some business to take care of first. Jack promised to call him after a couple days to check in.

Cassie was completely passed out beside him, exhausted from another night of work. Her mouth was all the way open and she even had a little bit of drool on her chin. Under different circumstances that would have made him laughingly smile to himself, his beautiful drooling girlfriend.

But not right now. Pilot needed him. It consumed his mind and the phone call from him kept playing over and over in his head. Pilot hadn't sounded like himself at all. He'd sounded like a kid having a nightmare. His voice alone had made all the hairs stand up on the back of Jack's neck.

"_Help me dude."_

"_Who is this?"_

"_Jack? Please be you. I need you bro. I need you to come back."_

"_Pi? Holy shit Pilot! Is that you?"_

"_I'm totally bent. I got lost. They stole everything. The Monty is dead. Fucking black death on my soul man. This town, I'm stuck in Regan Idaho. They won't let me leave. I need you to come back bro."_

Then he'd started crying, his voice hitching and falling like a little kid who couldn't catch their breath. Jack remembered a couple times before he'd heard Pilot cry like that and it always made his arms itch. Made him wish Pilot was there so he could wrap his arms around him and just wait it out.

_He's suddenly awake for no reason and doesn't understand why until he hears the tapping again. It's outside his trailer window. Someone is standing out there. He feels his heart crawl up into his throat as he curls his fingers around the baseball bat propped against his bed. He moves slow and stealthily to the window stopping in his tracks completely as the light shifts across Pilot's face. It's his friend but not. His eyes look haunting, huge dark sunken shadows, like he's a walking skull. The skull stares at him as dirty knuckles rap against his window again. Jack shakes himself out of it and goes to the window and opens it wide._

"_My mom's got this guy over. Can I stay here?"_

"_Yeah hold on. I'll unlock the door for you."_

_It had happened more times then either of them could count but that night had been different. Pilot had looked like the walking dead. Something had happened and he wouldn't talk about it but Jack hadn't hesitated to hold him as soon as he'd started sobbing._

Cassie mumbled something in her sleep and her head lolled off the headrest into the window. Jack glanced at her for a second to see if she'd wake up. Once assured that she was still asleep he reached across her and locked the car door.

---


	2. Cassie

Cassie was taking her turn at the wheel with Jack stretched out in the backseat supposedly napping. She could see his eyes were open though, his brow set in a look of concentrated worry.

"Jack." She watched him jump slightly at her voice through the rear-view mirror. "We're gonna find him." Her voice was quiet but calming as she caught his eye in the mirror. "He called you and he's waiting for us to come. He'll be there."

Jack nodded at her anxious but hopeful. It was like reassuring a little kid. Jack was still so much like a child that sometimes it overwhelmed her. Pilot too hadn't struck her as someone terribly capable of taking care of himself but he'd managed to make it somehow this far. She hoped he really _was_ there and that she wasn't lying to him.

--

Cassie stopped at a gas station just outside of Idaho. Jack had finally nodded off and was sleeping like the dead. He didn't even move when she slammed the car door shut. After refueling, the almost empty tank, she went inside to pay.

"You got coffee?" She asked the man at the counter. He was an older man who reeked of cigars and had crooked yellow teeth. He pointed to a silver pot in the back next to the sticky looking snow cone machine. She didn't want to even think about when it was last washed. She felt his eyes on her the whole way there. It was something she was almost used too considering her career choices. She snagged a couple of breakfast Danishes as well and then made her way back to the counter.

As the man was ringing her up her eyes fell on a display of maps. She plucked the cheapest one off the rack and threw it on the counter. "You ever heard of a town called Regan?"

The man's face lit up. "I sure have. My brother used ta live right near there." Big dumb and helpful. This she could handle.

"Is it a big town?"

"Regan? Nah, it's real tiny. I betchya even have trouble findin it on dat map a yers."

Cassie wanted to point out that it was _his_ shitty useless map that didn't have the town marked on it but instead smiled real wide and fake.

He eagerly spread the map open on the counter and started circling landmarks with a red pen.

After ten minutes of Cigar-Breath breathing down her neck she had a pretty good idea of where they had to go. She thanked him and hurried out of there before his eyes burned a hole through her.

When she got back in the car Jack was awake and ready to drive again, with the crumpled up map in her lap she started directing him.

It's was almost dusk when Cassie gasped and yelled at Jack to stop the car.


End file.
